Changelings, Chapt. 1, Pt. 5

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She scrambled again to her feet, glancing quickly at her fallen companion, just in time to se her draw his final breath. His singular open eye widened as he stared at some unseen apparition, and with a final belabored exhalation it fluttered shut, his body trembled and he lay deathly still, blood pooling about his body.

As she watched these final moments of his life, she felt a pain inside, an itch deep inside she could not scratch, a festering wound she could not lick clean. With the final rattling gasp of air escaping his nostrils, his tongue flicked out once more, futilely tasting at the air, then fell limp, and did not retract again into his mouth.

With this, again, an indescribable fury bubbled up in her soul, cleansing the burning wound on her heart. She would find this monster, and she would kill it or die trying. She set herself to die again, remembering the sweet tune, and wondering if her friend had been treated to the same, she steeled herself and darted into the forest following the trail of destruction left in the wake of the abomination.

Back on the forest floor, the body of the snake began to writhe and twist about. The sinew and muscle and bone tissue of his body began to reform and knit back together, forming a new skeleton, musculature, skin and organs. His body rolled over and over, thrashing so hard as to lift him into the air. Green sparks roiled about his form, emanating from his eyes, traveling down the length of his body, targeting any wounds upon his body, sinking into the flesh, forcing it to grow and regenerate. As the last of his body began to regenerate, his mouth was forced open as a tidal wave of sparks poured forth from his eyes, pushing into his mouth and traveling down his throat, sinking through the tissue, finding their way to his heart, shocking it again and again, forcing it to beat wildly.

As his heart began to beat, the sparks changed subtly in color. They were still green, but now had a blue hue to them, and they stopped targeting his heart, and moved onto his skeletal structure. Wave after wave of sparks poured over every bone in his body, forcing them to contort, shift, and grow at an accelerated rate. Bulges appeared under his skin as new parts of his body began to grow. His skull raised and elongated and rows of razor sharp teeth appeared. New joints began to appear. The sparks began to work on his muscles, forcing them to release and reattach to the bone in different ways, tendons and cartilage began to grow in places they had not. They waxed huge, growing until his skin threatened to rip asunder with the sheer immensity of them. The sparks ceased for a moment, then returned with a greater ferocity, pouring forth from under every scale on his body, pushing against the ground, forcing his limp form up into the air, and continued to work it’s wonders.